Exceeding even the most optimistic estimates, at the beginning of the summer season, the new forecasts of both the government and the actors of the Greek “heavy” industry, for income of this season by tourism.
And while until a few weeks ago the good scenario was to achieve the initial goal of revenue of about 9 billion euros, now the bar has risen much higher and some even talk about revenue of 12 billion from tourism.
All this under the condition of course that they will not come up and down in the health sector, with a possible new outbreak of the pandemic.
The picture from the islands and the tourist areas in general, is more than good. The fullness in many areas is reminiscent of 2019, while there is a good expectation for the next period and until the end of October, based on the bookings that exist, but also the demand from many countries, mainly European.
Soon there will be data from the BoG on the course of tourism in July. It is estimated that it will record an extremely good period, mainly in terms of revenue and will confirm the trend observed in June. A trend that showed significant per capita expenditure.
Yesterday, a top official of the Ministry of Finance said that with the most conservative estimates, the revenues from tourism are expected to move to 9 to 10 billion euros, while he did not rule out that they could go even higher, if the estimates of the market players are verified.
At the same time, yesterday from the podium of the TIF, the president of the Panhellenic Hoteliers Federation, Grigoris Tassios, proceeded with the prediction that the revenue target of 50% of those in 2019 “seems to have been met”.
At the same time, he stated that the epidemiological picture so far testifies that September will develop into a good month, especially in the case of Southern Greece, due to weather conditions.
In the same vein, the president of the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises (SETE), Giannis Retsos, who according to a publication of the Financial Times, states that “in May we said that if we managed to reach 40% of 2019 bookings, we would be very lucky. “Based on today’s data and after the September bookings, we will exceed 50% or even 60%, if there is no unexpected development regarding the pandemic”.
There are those who raise the bar of expectations even higher. One of them is the honorary president of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises and CEO of the Sani / Ikos group, Andreas Andreadis appears even more optimistic and talks about recovering 60% of the traffic and revenue of 2019.
As he stated in a relevant post on social networks, “the country’s tourism revenues could reach 12 billion euros this year, a number unthinkable a few months ago. In this case, the Greek GDP will increase by more than 6% “, he noted characteristically.
It should be noted that Andr. Andreadis was from the beginning the most optimistic, in relation to the other actors in the industry. He had stated that we are close to the target of 9 billion euros (50% of 2019) thanks to the increase in the Average Per Capita Expenditure. “Dominant in this season will be the high double-digit increase in revenue per visitor, due to increased purchasing power & shifting of the center of gravity to more expensive accommodation & high season. “Revenues will move even better than my first estimate (9 billion euros)” he stressed in a previous post.
Recall that the initial forecasts of a good scenario both in terms of government staff and in terms of the tourism market spoke of a recovery of 45% to 50% of arrivals and revenues in 2019. The realistic, if not unfavorable scenario of tourism operators, which taking into account the health data of May, it predicted a recovery of up to 40% of revenues in 2019, ie 7.5 billion euros.
The article Tourism: Expectations for revenues of up to 12 billion – Performance exceeds all expectations published in NewsIT .